There have been times in recent seasons when Ruby Walsh has made it look easy to ride winners at Cheltenham in March. Every other jockey in National Hunt’s weighing room knows that it remains the most difficult task in the sport, and no one illustrates the point quite like Aidan Coleman.

The 27-year-old from County Cork has finished in the top 10 in the British jockeys’ championship in six of the last seven seasons. This year, he has moved into the top three, a long way behind Richard Johnson but apparently secure in second place. Yet while Walsh could become the first jockey ever to reach 50 Festival winners next week, Coleman’s victory on Kayf Aramis in the 2009 Pertemps Final is still his only success at jumping’s showpiece meeting.

“I nicked a winner out of there a few years ago but I haven’t had one since,” Coleman said this week. “The racing is so competitive and you just have to get on the right horse on the right day. In those handicaps, you could run them 20-odd times and most likely get 20 different winners. For the last few years, come Cheltenham, I’ve never really had that many winning chances there, to be honest. I’ve been going there hoping for something, with an outside chance of a winner. This year, I’ve got some good chances, and I’d be disappointed if something didn’t win.”

Coleman’s optimism is understandable. He passed his previous best total of winners in a season before Christmas, and set a new high for prize money won as well, with nearly £1.2m in the bank and the most valuable meetings of the season, at Cheltenham and Aintree, still to come.

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Richard Johnson, the champion jockey-elect, has been the most obvious beneficiary of Tony McCoy’s decision to retire at the end of last season, but Coleman is not far behind. In a general sense, McCoy’s departure left a vacuum at the top for others to fill, but it also allowed Coleman to take over from the former champion as the principal jockey for John Ferguson’s string of blue-blooded cast-offs from Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation on the Flat.

“AP retiring opened up the job with John Ferguson and that is the main difference, without a shadow of a doubt,” Coleman says. “John’s strike-rate in particular has always been very high, which shows how good a trainer he is and how much of a loss to the jumping game he’s going to be [when he retires at the end of April to work for Godolphin full-time].

“Between the two of us, we’ve both enjoyed our best ever seasons. I’ll be riding Penglai Pavilion in the Supreme Novice Hurdle [on Tuesday], he was fifth in the Arc, that’s the sort of horse that John Ferguson has brought to the sport.

“When I first got the job, people were asking if I had to adjust my way of riding and things like that, but you’re adapting all the time anyway, be it a big jumper, a slow jumper, a good Flat horse or a bad Flat horse, there’s never any two the same.”

Coleman rode 59 winners between July and October last year, on the predominantly fast ground that Ferguson’s Flat-bred horses generally prefer. Similar going is expected at the Festival, and the rider likes the chances of three horses in particular, two of which have not seen a track since last year.

“I really like High Bridge [who is out of the 1,000 Guineas winner Ameerat] in the Bumper,” Coleman says. “He’s my standout. The last race he won was only at Catterick, but the feel he gave me was quite exceptional. That was the second time I’d ridden him and he was definitely improving. He’s bred in the purple like most of John’s are, and he probably will head back to the Flat in the summer.

“I’m also looking forward to Jaleo in the Fred Winter. He’s off [a handicap mark of] 134, he won at Catterick as well, and before that he was second to Clan Des Obeaux, who’s going for the Triumph, I believe, and I think he would have been closer on better ground. Like the Bumper, that’s a notoriously competitive race, but I wouldn’t swap those two for anything.

“Leoncavallo is interesting as well. He won five times earlier in the season and beat Sceau Royal at Wetherby when I had to make the running on him, which didn’t suit us. Then we were upsides Sceau Royal [at Cheltenham] next time when he unseated me at the last.

“Sceau Royal is 8-1 [for the Triumph Hurdle], we’ve run against each other twice, won one and arguably we might have won the other, and we’re 33-1, which doesn’t really make sense to me when his form ties right in with one of the leading fancies. He must have a solid each-way chance at least.”

Aidan Coleman is sponsored by Racing UK – the only place to see all the Cheltenham Festival live in High Definition following the launch of Sky 432 HD. Visit racinguk.com/HD for more information.